Our Mission
Make ideas tangible.
Start where others can’t operate yet,
before dashboards, before workflows, before compliance.
Our Services
Interfaces before management. IRL.
IRL operates before outcomes are defined.
We prototype systems while possibilities are still open, testing how people relate, adapt, and respond.
This work happens in a laboratory environment where research and building are inseparable.
Ideas move quickly into form. Form is tested through use. Use informs the next iteration.
Some outputs become products. Some remain experiments. Some exist as ongoing research.
All of them are designed as ways of relating to systems,
not merely operating them.
Interfacing
Interfaces shape how systems are lived.
Our work treats interaction as a primary material.
Interfaces are not layers placed on top of systems. They are how systems are experienced, understood, and lived with.
Through interface design, abstract systems become encounters.
Encounters become relationships.
Relationships become durable forms of use.
Interfaces are not layers placed on top of systems. They are how systems are experienced, understood, and lived with.
Through interface design, abstract systems become encounters.
Encounters become relationships.
Relationships become durable forms of use.
Research
Inquiry drives our work, but ideas only matter once they take form.
Emerging technologies do not arrive fully formed.
They arrive fragmented, unstable, and difficult to relate to.
IRL works at this stage.
We research systems while they are still undefined, using exploration, simulation, and experimentation to understand how people might live with them.
Research at IRL is not about proving outcomes.
It is about preserving possibility long enough for meaning to emerge.
IRL works at this stage.
We research systems while they are still undefined, using exploration, simulation, and experimentation to understand how people might live with them.
Research at IRL is not about proving outcomes.
It is about preserving possibility long enough for meaning to emerge.
Laboratory
A laboratory for systems before they settle.
IRL is where research becomes real.
Software and physical systems.
Objects, environments, and experimental tools.
The laboratory exists to build, test, and refine interfaces while rules are not yet fixed and outcomes are not yet known.
Some outputs become products.
Some remain experiments.
Some are deliberately unfinished.
All are ways of relating, not ways of managing.
Software and physical systems.
Objects, environments, and experimental tools.
The laboratory exists to build, test, and refine interfaces while rules are not yet fixed and outcomes are not yet known.
Some outputs become products.
Some remain experiments.
Some are deliberately unfinished.
All are ways of relating, not ways of managing.
Interfaces
Tools
Environments
Experimental Systems
IRL PLAYgroundIRL PLAYgroundIRL PLAYground
Let Us PlayIRL PLAYground is a study in education and play as interconnected infrastructures, and AI as civic intelligence.
It reimagines the classroom and the toy as parts of a single adaptive system — one that learns from itself through the continuous feedback of people, data, and materials.
Rather than treating software, toys, and educational content as separate products, IRL PLAYground unites them into a cyber-physical ecosystem: objects act as data interfaces, classrooms operate as learning networks, and AI coordinates complexity quietly in the background.
The result is an environment that rebalances in real time, enabling teachers, students, distributors, and manufacturers to co-produce value across a shared infrastructure.
The classroom is not a workflow, and the toy is not an object — both are protocols for learning.
IRL ProximityIRL ProximityIRL Proximity
Start SearchingIRL Proximity is a spatial research surface that turns Are.na blocks into programmable, multiplayer grids.
It sustains complexity instead of flattening it. Unlike “second brains” or productivity apps, it is a living interface where ideas are arranged in space, worked with in real time, and cultivated together. With full Are.na integration and ambient AI, Proximity transforms collecting into shared memory and living arguments.
Always a work in progress...
Closing Statement
Optimised systems are rarely meaningful.
Explained technologies are rarely used.
IRL builds where meaning actually forms.
© 2026 Interfacing Research Laboratory Ltd.